This invention relates to a rack or tray for holding lenses, such as ophthalmic and sunglass lenses.
Ophthalmic and sunglass lenses have been used for many years. The optical industry has faced difficult problems in the manufacturing, handling and packaging of the optical glass materials. Such glasses are sensitive to mechanical stress, scratch easily and require the utmost care in handling to insure that a safe precision product is provided to the user. More recently the problems associated with manufacturing handling and packaging of ophthalmic lenses became more difficult because of the use of composite materials for ophthalmic applications, namely, glass-plastic laminates. Generally, such composites are made of at least two materials: an inorganic glass lens prefinished by grinding and polishing to prescription on both of its major surfaces, and a composite organic material in the form of a thin film bonded to the glass lens and forming therewith the "uncut" form of the ophthalmic lens. If desired, the uncut lens is then tinted to various colors to provide luminous transmission characteristics thereto. For mounting, the completed lens is edge finished and installed in frames by conventional methods. The process for making such composite lenses generally includes the cleaning, drying and inspection of the inorganic glass surface, the positioning of the organic film material onto the glass lens, the lamination of the two components, dying or tinting the composite, and "fixing" the dye thereto.
In the above-described process the necessity of safe and convenient handling of the optical material should be apparent to those skilled in the optical art. Specifically, the highly polished active surfaces of the lens must remain free from contact with any hard foreign surface whatsoever during the manufacturing, handling and storage thereof. It has been found that when the active surfaces contact any hard substance the surface tends to become marred making subsequent processing steps futile or in the finished product resulting in impaired efficacy of transmission of light therethrough.
Accordingly, it is an important object of the present invention to provide a rack or tray for processing, handling or storing optical lenses.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a rack or tray which is capable of holding optical lenses in such manner that the active or critical surfaces of the lenses do not contact any foreign surface that may mar or scratch the active surfaces.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a series of nestable racks or trays which are capable of being stacked on one another without contacting the active surfaces of the lenses held therein.